Madrigalejo: Internship Goals

A take on the work in the real world is one, if not the only thing, that mass communication students look forward to in their stay in college. And I am no different. I have always seen the on-the-job-training as an effective avenue in putting to practice the skills that I have learned. I recognize, however, that there is still much that I do not know. Much of these things, I hope to learn through the course of my internship.

For my internship this summer, I look forward to achieving quite a number of things. Topping the list is my desire to be able to sharpen my critical thinking skills. I believe that working in the newspaper would be a very good application of what we have always called in our journalism classes, information selection. In the classroom setting, we are given a set of information and all that we have to do is to select which among the things in the list should be included in the article. And I must say that it is not at all easy. Now shifting to the real world where there are gazillions of information to choose from, I hope that I would be able to develop a keen very sight and a very strong nose for news.

Moreover, I want to develop a very flexible personality. I know that I already have the ability to handle pressure and all, but I have not yet tested how far my flexibility would go. In school, aside from my involvement in various organizations, I also have to handle the pressure coming from my academics (especially with my major subjects). But at the moment, that is pretty much all that I have done. Going out of the four walls of the Ateneo and getting a taste of the world of professional journalism, I know that somehow I would be pushed to my limits.

I want to be able to do things, not only the ones that is expected of me, but all the ones that I can do to help as well. Living up to the expectations I have set for myself, the expectations of our coordinator and our department, and of course, the expectations of my employer, I know that there is much pressure to deal with. And during the course of my internship, I want to be able to learn to handle that much.

Among the things that I want to develop in my internship is something that I have always tried to learn for so long. I want to learn to be able to take criticisms and change them into challenges. I am not yet that tough when it comes to these things, so I need to learn this just in time before my real exposure to the professional world. I can accept some criticisms, but of course, I know that most of these have been, in a way, selected by the people around me so as not to hurt me or anything. But I know that in the real world, I know it does not necessarily work that way.

Especially when the pressures and the deadlines get the best of all of us in the work place, mistakes are very much unwelcome. And when mistakes are committed during these dismal times, I can pretty well expect to get reprimanded.

As much as I want these slip-ups to be avoided, they often come up (but I promise to do as much as I can to steer clear of them) and because of them, I can get scolded for my work. But I know that they do not just scold me for nothing, the ones who have been in the work for quite some might give criticisms about me and my work so I can make the necessary improvements. Perhaps, I should develop a broader understanding of the nature of my work and how inevitable problems arise. I know these in the OJT, I can learn these with the people I will be working with.

But I must not only expect that to come from them, because at the end of the day, it must all come from me. The amount of things that I would know, the number of values that I would develop, and the extent of experiences that I would gather would all boil down to how much I want to make out of this whole internship. And I must say that I am taking this internship not only because it is a requirement, I am also doing this because I want to.

I am looking at the entire experience as an avenue not only to better myself as a journalist, but also to better myself as a person.